A. Lucas c.v.—1/6/14 – p. 12
Curriculum Vitae for Ashley Lucas
Associate Professor of Theatre & Drama and the Residential College
Director of the Prison Creative Arts Project
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Education
2006 University of California, Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies and Drama and Theatre
San Diego (UCSD) Title of Dissertation: “Performing the (Un)Imagined
Nation: The Emergence of Ethnographic Theatre in
the Late Twentieth Century”
Advisors: Dr. Ana Celia Zentella (Ethnic Studies)
Dr. Jorge Huerta (Drama and Theatre)
2003 UCSD M.A. in Ethnic Studies
Title of Master’s Thesis: “The Politics of the
Chicana/o Body on Stage”
2001 Yale University B.A. in English and Theatre Studies with academic
distinction in both majors
Professional Experience
Positions Held
2013—present—Associate Professor of Theatre & Drama and Director of the Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
2008-2012—Assistant Professor of Dramatic Art at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC)
2006-2008—Carolina Postdoctoral Fellow for Faculty Diversity at UNC
2005-2006—Associate-In Professor, Research Assistant, and Doctoral Student at UCSD
2001-2005—Teaching Assistant, Research Assistant, and Doctoral Student at UCSD
Academic Conferences
March 19-22, 2014—along with Wendy Wolters Hinshaw andKathie Klarreichwill offer a closing keynote address for a one-day workshop on“Prison Networks: Broadcasting Why Prison Writing Matters” at the Conference on College Composition and Communication in Indianapolis, IN
November 15-16, 2013—served as a panelist on a panel entitled “Theatre Practice in Prison: Strategies for Engagement” at the Shakespeare in Prisons Conference at Notre Dame University in South Bend, IN
October 28, 2013—facilitated dialogue on engaged pedagogy in the classroom during a breakout session for the Intergroup Relations 25th Anniversary Symposium at the University of Michigan
September 27-28, 2013—served as a panelist on a panel entitled “Nuts and Bolts of Going on the Job Market” at the annual Ford Fellows conference in Washington, DC
August 1-4, 2013—presented a paper entitled “A Death in the Family: Representations of the Death Penalty and Familial Relationships in Migdalia Cruz’s El Grito del Bronx” at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) conference in Orlando, FL
June 25-26, 2013—presented a paper entitled “Blogging, Social Media, and Incarceration: Online Connections Between the Public and Prisoners” at the Moore Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program (MURAP) at UNC in Chapel Hill, NC
April 12-13, 2013—gave the keynote lecture entitled “We Are All Ethnic Studies: Embodied Responses to the Crises We Face” at the National Association for Ethnic Studies conference in Fort Collins, CO
August 2-5, 2012—presented two papers entitled “The Previously Undocumented: Queer Life in El Paso and Juarez in Gregory Ramos' Border Stories" and “Devising New Works in Prison: A Question of Genre” at the ATHE conference in Washington, DC
July 26-27, 2012—moderated a panel on “The (Ir)Relevance of Civil Rights Today” at the annual MURAP conference
March 17, 2012—co-presented a talk with Paul Cuadros on “Immigrant Bodies in Performance: A New Documentary Play about North Carolina Poultry Workers” at the New Roots in the Old South: Immigration and the Changing Face of North Carolina Conference at the UNC School of Government
November 10-13, 2011—performed my play Doin’ Time as an invited keynote event, followed by a book signing of Razor Wire Women, at the National Women’s Studies Association conference in Atlanta, GA
October 14-15, 2011—performed with Paul Bonin-Rodríguez in a creative session entitled “Pedagogy as Performance” at the Conference of Ford Fellows in Irvine, CA
August 20-23, 2011—spoke on a roundtable entitled “Research and Writing for Social Change” at the American Sociological Association conference in Las Vegas, NV
August 19-21, 2011—co-presented a paper with Jodie Lawston entitled “From Representations to Resistance: How the Razor Wire Binds Us” at the conference for the Society for the Study of Social Problems in Las Vegas, NV
August 11-14, 2011—spoke on a roundtable about my co-edited book Razor Wire Women at the ATHE conference in Chicago, IL
August 11-14, 2011—performed monologues from my play Doin’ Time on a panel entitled “Unsettled Remains: Blurring Boundaries in Contemporary Documentary Theater” at the ATHE conference in Chicago, IL
July 21-22, 2011—presented a paper entitled “Incarcerated Immigrants: Documentation and Its Discontents” at the Moore Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program conference at UNC
May 16-19, 2011—co-presented with Jodie Lawston a paper entitled “Las representaciones de Estados Unidos: las mujeres encarceladas” at the VIII Taller Internacional: Mujeres en el Siglo XXI, hosted by the Women’s Studies Department at the University of Havana, Cuba
November 18-21, 2010 – performed my one-woman play, Doin’ Time: Through the Visiting Glass, as a featured event at the American Studies Association’s annual meeting on the theme of “Crisis, Chains, and Change: American Studies for the 21st Century” in San Antonio, TX
November 12-13, 2010— presented a paper entitled “Necessary Theatre: U.S. Latina/o Performance as a Cultural Intervention” at the Performance and Embodied Research Colloquium at Duke University in Durham, NC
October 16-17, 2010 –served as chair for the workshop for Predoctoral Humanities Scholars at the Conference of Ford Fellows in Irvine, CA
August 2, 2010 – moderator of a plenary entitled “Kinship and Shared Spaces: Exploring Queer Childhood” at the Women and Theatre Program and LGBT Focus Group Conference at UCLA
October 16-17, 2009 –panelist in a workshop for Predoctoral Humanities Scholars at the Conference of Ford Fellows in Irvine, CA
August 7, 2009 – moderated an audience discussion after the Guerilla Girls On Tour perform their play, If You Can Stand the Heat: The History of Women and Food and The History of Women in Theatre: Condensed, at the Women and Theatre Program (WTP) conference in the Bronx, New York
February 13-14, 2009 –moderated a panel entitled “U.S. Latina/o Theatre: The Next Generations” at the NoPassport conference at the Martin E. Segal Center at the City University of New York
November 7-8, 2008 –presented a paper entitled “The Walls that Separate Us: Prisons and Families” at the Institute of African American Research's annual African American Studies Conference at UNC-CH
October 16-19, 2008 –presented a paper entitled “The Invisible Labor of Prisoners” at the annual conference for the American Studies Association in Albuquerque, New Mexico
September 18-20, 2008 – presented a paper entitled “The Truth About Prisons: Michael Keck'sTheatre Confronts Notions of Justice and Citizenship” at the annual Ford Foundation Fellows Conference in Washington, D.C.
July 31-August 3, 2008 –engaged in a panel discussion entitled “Their Voices, Our Vision: Solo Performers in Action” at the annual conference for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education in Denver, Colorado
November 15-18, 2007 – presented a paper on “Doin’ Time: Performing Research, Researching Performance” in the Performance Research Working Group at the annual conference for the American Society for Theatre Research in Phoenix, Arizona
July 26-29, 2007 –presented a paper on “Pintos on the Great White Way: Short Eyes and Zoot Suit Bring Latinos to Broadway” at the annual conference for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education in New Orleans
July 24-25, 2007 –chaired two panels on “Voz Alta: Challenging Notions of Loss and Mourning in Late Twentieth-Century U.S. Latino/a and Latin American Theatre” and “Deconstructing Women: External Crisis and Its Reflection on the Female Body” at the annual conference for the Women and Theatre Program at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts/Riverfront
February 2-3, 2007 – chaired a panel on “Border Stories” at the NoPassport "Dreaming the Americas" Conference at the Segal Center at CUNY
November 6-8, 2006 – presented a paper on “The Truth About Prisons: Playwrights Use Prisoners’ Stories to Confront Notions of Justice and Citizenship” at the Dissent in America conference hosted by the American University in Cairo, Egypt
August 1-3, 2006 –presented a paper on “Escaping the Female Grotesque: Chicana Identities in Real Women Have Curves” at the annual conference for the Women and Theatre Program of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education in Chicago, Illinois
June 28-July 1, 2006 –presented a paper on “Transnational Ethnographic Performance: Mapping Agency and Voicing in Greg Ramos’s Border Stories” at the annual conference of the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies in Guadalajara, México
July 28-31, 2005 – presented a paper on “Research in Performance: A Case Study in Interview-Based Theatre” at the annual conference for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education in San Francisco, California
April 13-17, 2005 – presented a paper on “Escaping the Female Grotesque: Chicana Identities in Real Women Have Curves” at the annual conference of the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies in Miami, Florida
July 29-August 1, 2004 - presented a paper on "Culture Clash's Chavez Ravine: Performed History in Los Angeles" at the annual conference for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education in Toronto
April 22, 2004 – served on a panel discussion on “Perspectives on the Border” at the International Conference on Latin American Studies at California State University, San Bernardino
March 5-6, 2004 – presented a paper on “Culture Clash’s Chavez Ravine: The Mediation of History Through Docudrama” at the 2nd Annual Crossing Borders Ethnic Studies Graduate Conference at UCSD
November 21-23, 2003 – presented a paper on “The Role of History in Selected Plays of Suzan-Lori Parks: Venus and The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World” at the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Theatre Research and the Theatre Library Association in Durham, North Carolina
October 3-5, 2003 – presented a paper on “Escaping the Female Grotesque: Chicana Identities in Real Women Have Curves” at “Sustainable Feminisms: A Cross-Border Conference” at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota
August 19-23, 2003 – presented a paper on “Chicano Theatre in Education” at the International University Theatre Association’s fifth annual conference in Olympia, Greece
August 3-4, 2003 – presented a paper on “Chicano Theatre in Education” at the Forum on Assessment in Arts Education at New York University
April 24, 2003 –presented a paper on “AIDS in Chicano Communities: Evelina Fernandez’s Dementia as a Response to the Crisis” at the Latin American Studies Graduate Student Conference at the Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies at UCSD
April 18-19, 2003 –presented a paper on “AIDS in Chicano Communities: Evelina Fernandez’s Dementia as a Response to the Crisis” at the Latina/o Studies Graduate Student Conference on “Latinidad in the New Millenium: Bridging Borders In and Beyond Academia” at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
April 17, 2003 –presented a paper on “Teatro de la Esperanza’s Guadalupe and the Production of Social Meaning” at the International Conference on Latin American Studies: “Re-Defining Latin American Identity in the 21st Century” at California State University, San Bernardino
April 3-5, 2003 – presented a paper on “The Political Legacy of the Docudrama in Chicano Theatre, from 1974 to the Present” at the annual conference for the National Association for Ethnic Studies at Arizona State University in Phoenix, Arizona
-at same conference, chaired a panel on “Performance in U.S. Ethnic Cultures”
Workshops
November 8, 2013—led a theatre workshop with the incarcerated women in the Acting Out theatre troupe at Logan Correctional Facility in Lincoln, Illinois
May 31, 2013—co-facilitated with Buzz Alexander a workshop on engaged scholarship and teaching for the Boyer Faculty Scholars Program at the University of Michigan, Flint
September 18, 2012—led a workshop entitled “Writing Social Justice: A Writing Workshop for the Community” at Illinois State University in Bloomington
Summers 2009-2012 – led a ten-week Presentation Skills Workshop for the Moore Undergraduate Research Program (MURAP) at UNC
April 5, 2008 – led a theatre-based workshop on the “Families of the Incarcerated” at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor
May 2, 2007 – led a theatre-based workshop on the significance of involving prisoners’ family members in prisoner reentry efforts at the North Carolina Department of Corrections’ conference on Offender Reentry
April 13-14, 2007 – led workshops on prison-related theatre as part of the Arrested Voices: Performance in Prisons, Northern Plains Performance Festival at the University of Northern Iowa
December 2006-February 2007 –led a series of workshops on ethnographic theatre with at-risk youth at the Durham Criminal Justice Resource Center
April 6-9, 2005 –co-taught a workshop with Jorge Huerta on “How to Do Ethnographic Theatre” at the Latin American Theatre Today Conference at the University of Connecticut
January 19, 2005 – co-presenter in a workshop with Juan Felipe Herrera and Marissa Raigoza on “Innovative Approaches to Teaching Latin American Poetry in the Classroom” at the Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies at UCSD
Other Public Speaking
November 7, 2013—gave a lecture on prison arts work at the opening reception for the Walls and Bridges exhibition (the first exhibition of art by incarcerated women from Logan Correctional Facility in Lincoln, Illinois) at Heartland Community College in Normal, Illinois
June 17, 2013—gave a public lecture/performance entitled “Doin’ Time: Families and Incarceration” as a fundraiser for Community Solutions of El Paso (an organization that provides support to prisoners’ children) in El Paso, Texas
September 18, 2012—spoke about diversity in the arts and higher education at Illinois State University in Bloomington
May 29, 2012—presented a paper entitled “The Previously Undocumented: Queer Life in El Paso and Juarez in Gregory Ramos' Border Stories" at the MURAP Seminar at UNC
March 26, 2012—gave the 2012 Merle Kling Honors Undergraduate Fellowship Lecture (an invited lecture with a $1,000 honorarium) on “Prisoners, Families, and Performance: Community Engagement Through the Arts” at Washington University in Saint Louis, MO
February 22-24, 2012—led a working group for two evening sessions on “Advocacy on Behalf of the Prison Family” (during which a group of over thirty family members of prisoners, activists, lawyers, and people involved in prison ministry collaboratively drafted the Bill of Rights for Prisoners’ Families) at the Prisoner's Family Conference in Albuquerque, NM
-at the same conference also presented a paper entitled "How the Razor Wire Binds Us: Incarcerated Women and Their Families"
November 17, 2011—Razor Wire Women book reading and signing event with Jodie Lawston at the Regulator Bookshop in Durham, NC
November 15, 2011—Razor Wire Women book reading and signing event with Jodie Lawston at UNC in the Kenan Theatre